The Fishing Report

Brian Hoffman

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, August 6, 2009

You get on Highway 101 and you keep going, such a long, long way, up the coast and through the redwoods, then no redwoods, until California and all you really know are gentle memories, miles and a state line behind.

There were 80 boats working the estuary of the Rogue River on Wednesday. Or more, as Harvey Young saw it, there where the stream empties itself into the ocean at a place called Gold Beach. It was Young and some of the other Oregon guides, while all the rest seemed to be California fishermen, guys who had come far to find salmon.

And it seems they did. The boats chugged up and down the slow water, all rods and lines and their dead anchovies rigged to sets of spinner blades, chopping away at the Rogue in Kelly green or gold or whatever else brings the luck. Sunday, Young knew of a boat and its anglers that landed seven salmon. Monday and Tuesday, Young slid the net under two fall-run kings. Wednesday, for whatever reason, the salmon mostly were content to jump and roll, morning into afternoon, under the low gray sky. Young saw fish landed, himself had two chances, then called the day done as rain clouds gathered.

To account for the Rogue and the push north into Oregon, you have to take a sideways look at the Klamath. Young, who lives in Brookings, had been making the opposite commute, from Oregon into the Golden State, to fish the mighty Klamath. For better than a month, he had fine fishing, as the spring salmon shoved in and made their way. A week ago, there still was a decent showing of fish, a mix of spring and fall run, according to some, and Young fished late into the week, until the salmon went away or stopped swimming in, either way. The lower Klamath, Young said, has warmed to 76 degrees - 78, in places - and gone green with algae. With that, game over, for now.

The biologists, via Fish and Game, are still predicting a "large" fall run on the Klamath. And that might happen. For now, it's the wait until September, when just about every salmon and steelhead guide in two states will park a camper for the fall season.

Coming up the Klamath and turning into the Trinity, we find guide Dave Jacobs at Junction City. His days, he said, usually are good for at least one salmon. But it's all stealth fishing, ghosting down river, pointing out the salmon holes to clients while quietly running out the lines. The Kwikfish have been stored. For now, it's roe, back drifted into the deep water, well ahead of the boat. The news on the Klamath is not good news for Jacobs. He listened Wednesday, though he'd already heard it, then shifted the conversation to steelhead, which he thinks are more likely to move into the warm water of the Klamath, then cool flows of the Trinity.

Jacobs drives to work from Anderson, where the Lower Sacramento cuts its way through the valley. Far downstream, to Sacramento and then below to Clarksburg, river guide Bob Sparre is doing what he can to survive until September, when he'll make his way to the Klamath. For now, surviving means guiding the occasional trip on the Sacramento, where he has a few clients interested in catching smallmouth bass. He was at Clarksburg last week, on one of the trips, and his clients were steady into the little bass, when one of the rods bucked with something large. Sparre picked it up, handed it off, and told his customer, "It's a striped bass." At the boat, tearing off line and giving it up again, the striped bass became a salmon of 30 pounds. Sparre reached down, pulled the hook, and the day went on.

Clarksburg becomes Walnut Grove which becomes the delta, which we'll motor through until Carquinez Strait opens into the North Bay. ... Over at Port Sonoma, where a river that's a slough finds the bay in a lazy kind of way, Joel Sinkay is selling bait again. Bullheads. He sells the mean little fish, he sells beer, jerky, chips, all that, and he wishes them well as he sends every angler on his or her way, amen. Sinkay knows there are striped bass in Sonoma Creek, where Highway 37 cuts on through, and he suspects that is where much of the bait ends up. He also knows his customers are heading to the Napa River to fish the sloughs, places like Horseshoe and Napa, so named when the creativity went out and rode off. If you have a boat and know your way around the Petaluma River, Sinkay recommends a place called Miramonte. Barring that, there's Papa's Taverna, a place on the bank above the lean-tos and derelicts. All that and Greek dancing, too. ... Joel, though, has been fishing the coast, trailering to Tomales Bay. He fished there Tuesday afternoon, drifting about, and landed two halibut and an angel shark, which struck him as odd in several ways, none of which he offered.

San Francisco Bay is still alive with halibut and bass. Like last week, there's Angel Island and then there's everywhere else. The California Dawn started its Wednesday at the island, west side, and put in fish, quite a few, before moving off to finish the afternoon at Alcatraz. Total catch: 22 halibut, 22 striped bass, 1 leopard shark. ... The CD had a mix of sardine and anchovy in its live wells. With the bay water just slightly off-color as a product of the larger tides, Capt. James Smith thought the sardine performed just slightly better in the way of enticing gamefish. ... Friday and Saturday, Smith fished the Marin coast. The weather was something close to ideal, plus he had another reason to go. Friday's trip was the California Dawn High-Roller Lingcod Derby, first annual. The boat made a stop over a small wreck on the way up, but after that it was straight to Chimney Rock. Then Point Reyes. The 33 anglers fished the sardines. They worked chrome bars over the rock-reefs. They landed 33 limits of lingcod. Grand prize, for the jackpot fish, added up to two grand. Second place paid $900. Saturday, minus a derby for motivation, the boat returned for 25 more limits.

From there it's green water until it becomes blue, in the way you dream of albacore and those miles far from shore. Boats fished the weekend, because a calm sea demanded it, and maybe the sea laughed some, too, because the tuna hardly bit. Some boats had four fish, some less than that, and some motored in with the white stripe down the middle. Wednesday, the skiffs went again from Half Moon Bay, they pushed for the Pioneer Seamount, above and below and right for it, got there to find that the water was green and not much good. The Connie O, a 29-foot six-pack charter from Pillar Point with Capt. Dennis Baxter as backup skip, throttled past Pioneer for the "601," and then went another 22 miles south from there, until the boat was 64 miles from harbor. They started fishing at 9 a.m. but didn't locate fish until 11:30, when the albacore came up under the boat and the crew held them there with chunked bait while the four passengers fly lined live sardine. They landed 26 longfins to 26 pounds.

And there it ends, while the boats turned north, counting miles to home.